Neco Williams Nottingham Forest has become one of the quieter certainties of this Premier League era. The Wrexham-born full-back arrived from Liverpool in the summer of 2022 as a 21-year-old with a handful of senior appearances and a reputation built largely on potential. Four years on he has played in three different positions for four different Forest head coaches, and on 5 September 2026 he signed a new contract at the City Ground running to 2030. This is the guide to the No.3.
Who is Neco Williams?
Williams was born in Wrexham in April 2001 and joined Liverpool’s academy as a boy, travelling across from north Wales for years before the club moved him closer. He came through at Kirkby alongside a generation that produced Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott, and made his senior Liverpool debut in the League Cup in October 2019, still 18.
What followed was the familiar problem of the promising academy full-back at a club challenging for everything: Trent Alexander-Arnold was directly ahead of him and going nowhere. Williams collected cup appearances, occasional league minutes and a place in matchday squads through Liverpool’s most successful modern seasons, then went to Fulham on loan in January 2022 and helped Marco Silva’s side win the Championship.
By the summer of 2022 both parties could see the maths. Forest, newly promoted and rebuilding a squad almost from scratch, paid a reported fee in the region of £17m. It is one of the better pieces of business the club has done in the period covered by our record signings list.
The Neco Williams Nottingham Forest story so far
Forest bought a right-back and, for long stretches, played him at left-back. That was not a tactical masterstroke so much as a squad-building necessity in those chaotic first post-promotion windows, and Williams simply got on with it. He has since operated as a right-back, a left-back, a right wing-back and a left wing-back, sometimes within the same month.
The versatility has occasionally cost him credit. Players who fill gaps are rarely described as indispensable, and Williams has spent much of his Forest career being the answer to a question about somebody else’s absence. But he has been there through relegation fights, the points deduction, a European qualification and now a change of head coach, and he keeps starting.
His most recent involvement was also his most frustrating. In the 0-0 draw with Tottenham Hotspur on 5 September 2026 he had a goal disallowed following a VAR check for handball, a decision that dominated the following week’s discussion and left Forest still waiting for a first win of 2026/27.
How he plays
Williams is a modern, front-foot full-back rather than a defender who happens to be quick. His best work is done in the final third: overlapping runs, early crosses on the move, and a willingness to keep making the same run when the first six have come to nothing. He is a genuinely good crosser off both sides, which is what makes the left-sided experiment work at all.
Defensively he is aggressive and quick to recover, and he competes in the air better than his frame suggests. The weaknesses are consistent with the profile: he can be caught high when possession turns over, and his positional discipline in a flat back four is not as reliable as it is in a system with cover behind him.
Which is precisely why the current shape suits him.
Where he fits under Oliver Glasner
Oliver Glasner, appointed on 6 July 2026, brought with him the 3-4-2-1 he used at Crystal Palace – the shape we broke down in our look at his formation. It asks for two wing-backs who can cover the full length of the pitch and provide most of the team’s width, with a back three behind them to absorb the risk.
That is close to the ideal job description for Williams. It removes the part of full-back play he does least well – holding a defensive line in a four – and maximises the part he does best. It also means competition, because Daniel Muñoz followed Glasner from Selhurst Park for a reported £22m on 31 August and is a specialist in the same role on the right. Ola Aina and Nicolò Savona are also in the picture.
Between them they give Glasner four senior options for two positions, which after a summer that left the centre of defence looking thin is a rare piece of comfort. The full squad list, numbers included, is in our 2026/27 squad numbers guide.
Wales, and why the caps matter
Williams has been a Wales international since his teens and was part of the squad that ended the country’s 64-year wait for a World Cup appearance, travelling to Qatar in 2022. He is comfortable in a back three for his country too, which is one reason the transition to wing-back at club level has looked so untroubled.
The international breaks cost Forest a player for two weeks at a time. They have also given him a volume of competitive senior football that most 25-year-old English full-backs simply have not had. His Wales record is tracked by the Football Association of Wales.
The new contract, and what it says
The deal to 2030 was announced on 5 September 2026, a few hours before the Tottenham game, and it is worth reading as a statement of intent rather than routine housekeeping. Tottenham interest in Williams was reported during August. Forest’s answer was to tie him down for four more years.
For a club that spent around £101m in the summer while also selling Elliot Anderson to Manchester City for a reported £116m, keeping hold of a homegrown-adjacent full-back entering his best years is the sort of decision that does not generate headlines and tends to look sensible in hindsight. Contract announcements are always confirmed first on the official Nottingham Forest website.
What comes next
Forest travel to Villa Park to face Aston Villa at 3pm on Saturday, the first fixture after the September international break, still chasing a first league win of the season from two points in three games. Williams will almost certainly start somewhere in that team; whether it is on the right or the left is Glasner’s to decide, and has been the running theme of the player’s entire Forest career.
Four seasons in, with a contract to 2030 and a system that finally asks him to do the thing he is best at, the Neco Williams question at the City Ground has changed. It is no longer whether he is good enough. It is how high the ceiling goes. His Premier League appearance record is tracked on the Premier League’s own site.
